Have you every done an online search for your healthcare practice to see what business directories show your profile? Or have you ever seen your practice appear on a website like Yelp or YellowPages.com, yet you never added yourself to this online listing service – and in fact, the information provided isn’t even correct? Over the past several years, hundreds of online directories, both business and medical, have sprung up to help people find the right healthcare provider. But if you haven’t claimed your listings, then chances are you are losing out on a lot of new patients.

What Makes Online Directories/ Listings Important?

Online directory listings are available 24/7, which makes them a significant part of your digital marketing strategy. Unfortunately, many of these directories create profiles for you and your practice without your even knowing it. They do this by pulling data from other sources, which often leads to profiles with inaccurate, missing or outdated information (think old address, wrong phone number) that can have a big impact on your practice.

Adding Information to Your Online Directories

Claiming your online directory listings allows you to edit your information, including your address, logo, contact information, video links, office hours, specialty and social media links. We suggest creating an outline of the content you will use for your listings to ensure you use the exact same information for each one. Details as minor as the formatting of your phone number, how your office hours are entered, and whether you use DPM on one site and D.P.M. on another can lead to confusion for potential patients.

You can also customize your profile when you claim your listings. We suggest making the most of the expanded listings offerings to provide as much information as people in your community might need to help them make the decision to choose your practice. And don’t forget to include a link to your website! Once search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing see a link from an online directory to your practice’s site, they’ll consider you “reputable” and will accordingly push your website up in the search rankings.

Many healthcare-focused directories, such as WebMD.com, Healthgrades.com, and Vitals.com, also allow patients to leave reviews. Online reviews can have the power to make or break your practice, so it’s important to understand how your responses can impact your practice. They can not only help amplify awareness of your practice with new patients, but they can even minimize potential damage from a bad review. (Here are some Do’s and Don’ts of Responding to Online Reviews.)

If you haven’t claimed your online directory listings yet, you may have the wrong information reaching potential patients, not enough information on the web, or find bad reviews or comments that could be affecting your practice in a negative way.

Managing and monitoring each and every directory listing takes time – time which most medical practitioners would rather spend taking care of their patients! That’s why iHealthSpot offers a full range of online marketing services, providing the expertise and experience that you need to create online directory listings that will help you grow your practice. If you are interested in learning more, contact us today, toll-free at (877) 709-0999 for your FREE consultation with our experts today!

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Diagnosing Your Online Presence

Diagnosing Your Online Presence

As a doctor, you diagnose your patients with various ailments every day. You make careful assessments, and by the end of their visit, you have a plan to further explore or treat the problem. You share this plan with the patient and then work with them on their road to recovery.

But how well can you diagnose and treat your online presence? If you have a website and know you need SEO, that’s a good start. But in today’s digital world, web marketing goes far beyond this, and a well thought out plan for online marketing is crucial to growing your patient base.

So. Where to begin? In this iHealthSpot series, we’ll help you on your way to a healthy online presence and share the strategy behind improving it with five key elements of online marketing.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll discuss:

Effective Website Design

The science of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

“Socializing” with your patients through Social Media Marketing

Protecting your online reputation through Reputation Management

Improving ROI through Pay-per-Click (PPC) Advertising

By the end of the series, you’ll know how to use these marketing mediums to increase your visibility online, increase your patient base and grow your overall business.

Effective Website Design

We’ll begin with website design, and delve into today’s best practices for modern, effective website design in “Check your Website’s Vitals.” We'll touch on the importance of brand identity, modern techniques for mobile friendly web design and how to us your website to reach and capture your target audience. We’ll cover effective copywriting and the importance of regular additions to content through blogging. We’ll also cover important interactive features such as online appointment requests and online bill pay and why it is imperative to offer these tools to patients.

The Science of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

For many patients, the “how” of getting well is foreign to them, as are all the medical terms doctors use. For most of our physician clients, the same holds true where search engine optimization (SEO) is concerned. Though you know you need it, the science of how it works is often daunting and confusing. What goes into optimizing a website for search engines? What is a metatag or page title? If these terms aren't familiar to you and you’d like to learn more about what goes in to optimizing your site for search, make sure to read “SEO…The Cure for an Invisible Website.” We’ll explain exactly what goes into search engine optimization and how to ensure your site ranks for all the keywords related to your specialty.

"Socializing” with your Patients through Social Media Marketing

Did you know social media is the fastest growing and most cost-effective marketing platform today? An unbelievable number of people are using Facebook, Twitter, and other social media channels to check out practices and read comments from real patients. Discover the best social media platforms to promote your website and business in "The Social Media Epidemic." There are so many platforms to choose from that it can be overwhelming. In this article, we'll narrow it down to the most popular platforms and the most relevant for medical practices to best promote your medical services, and engage with patients.

Protecting your online reputation through Reputation Management

You’ve worked hard to build your reputation as a respected medical professional in your community, but have you invested in building that reputation online? Negative reviews reach a large audience and will have a negative impact on your business. In "Decontaminating Negative Reviews", we'll share the value of staying on top of your online. Reputation and you’ll learn how pro-active reputation management can not only minimize the effects of negative reviews, but also positively impact your business with positive ones.

Improving ROI through Pay-per-Click (PPC) Advertising

Some people shy away from “paid” ads on search engines. They are told that “organic SEO” is better. In the final part of our series, we'll explore the creation of a PPC (pay-per-click) campaign. If done properly, a PPC campaign has the potential of becoming your most effective form of online marketing. We'll explain why in "PPC: Seek a Second Opinion."

Bottom Line

A strong online presence won't happen overnight. It takes a multi-tiered approach across multiple online mediums. With a good website as your foundation and an experienced agency partner, the sky is the limit. A great place to start is with education.

Be sure to join iHealthSpot for this informative series, designed to give you the insight you need to tackle the online world and ultimately conquer it! You don’t need to do anything. Just look for an email each month on these exciting topics and make some time to read and embrace them.

If at any time you’d like to discuss any part of the series with a marketing consultant,, just contact us at (877) 709-0999 and we’ll be happy to have a complimentary, no obligation consultation with you!

10 Things to Avoid on Your Medical Website

First impressions count, and on the web, it is the design of your medical website that first captures someone’s attention. It can help you gain new patients, interact with them online, provide education, and even generate positive testimonials. But it’s not just about your website’s look. Your website should be efficient and easy to navigate as well. You should also avoid certain features and functionality that people will find annoying -- because annoyed visitors will quickly “bounce” and leave your site, before they even know how you can help them.

We’ve compiled a list of the top 10 things to avoid on your medical website to ensure online visitors who come to your site, stay on your site and – hopefully – become new patients:

Non-Responsive Design:

People today are accessing your website from their smartphones and tablets even more than they do from a desktop or laptop computer. If your site isn’t optimized for mobile, visitors accessing your site will be forced to scroll from side-to-side to read your web pages. Or have to pinch-to-zoom because the words or buttons on a page are too small. This is a bad user experience and causes many people to immediately leave a site. To avoid this problem, you need a responsive medical website design that delivers an optimized experience that enables your site to adjust to a variety of screen sizes, for a variety of devices.

Broken Links:

If your site has any broken links, visitors will know right away that you haven’t updated it in a long time…which means the information they see may not be correct. They may also assume that your website is no longer active. Every website should have a custom 404 page. If your website doesn’t provide one and someone mistypes your URL in the search bar, they may even think your healthcare practice no longer exists.

Poorly Written Content:

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your website is designed; if you don’t have enough relevant, well-written content, then you’re going to lose potential patients. According to the latest polls, 150 million Americans search for health information online. So, it’s imperative that your website include reliable, lay-friendly patient education information so that you can be sure your patients get their health information from a trusted and reliable source – you! (Did you know that iHealthSpot includes award winning, peer-reviewed patient education for every medical specialty in its website hosting packages?)

Hard to Read Text:

In addition to being well written, your website’s content should also be easy to read. Best practice is to have a strong contrast between the text and the background. Also, avoid backgrounds that are busy as they can be distracting, making the text harder to read.

No Calls to Action:

This is especially important to help convert “visitors” to “patients”. It doesn’t make sense to explain what sets you and your practice apart from other local practitioners, without also letting your site visitors know what to do next. Simple Calls to Action like, “To learn more about our services and capabilities, call (012) 345-6789,” make it very easy for a potential patient to get in touch.

Bad Navigation:

A Call to Action is only helpful if people can find it. What if someone visits your site but doesn’t understand where to go and which pages to view? People visiting your website should be able to easily find what they need. While this seems obvious, studies have shown that a majority of small business websites don’t provide any direction or ask people to click around the pages. Your main navigation is arguably the most essential – and ever present – aspect of your website. Also, your site should include clear headlines and easy to find content that explains what you do.

No Contact Information:

A “Contact Us” form may seem like an easy way for people to reach you with their questions, but it isn’t the only way to engage with potential patients. Make it easy for people to get in touch with you via the phone and social media. If a visitor isn’t able to easily find this type of information, they’ll probably leave your site to find another practice that is easier to contact.

Long Loads:

Shorter attention spans are not just making people check their phones several hundred times per day. They’re also making people really impatient when it comes to waiting for websites to load. According to the latest research, 47% of people expect a web page to load in two seconds or less, with 40% bouncing if a site takes more than three seconds to load. And even a one-second delay can decrease patient satisfaction by approximately 16%. So, when designing your website, avoid heavy images, unnecessary media, or animations that will slow your site’s load time.

Excessive Pop Ups:

Too many pop up messages are a sure way to turn people away from your website. They irritate people the moment they appear on their screen, as they severely disrupt the reading experience… And the last thing you want to do is keep people from accessing the high-quality patient education information that your site provides.

No Social Media Links:

An unbelievable number of people are using Facebook, Twitter, and other social media channels to check out practices and read comments from real patients. Research shows that when friends refer friends to a doctor, that referral carries more weight than any other form of marketing. Make sure you add social media icons and links to your website pages so that users can share any information they find on your site with others. Social media is the ultimate way to get word-of-mouth referrals.

Medical professionals come to iHealthSpot for medical website design because they know they need a site that fits the unique needs of their healthcare practice. It needs to look great: it should be intuitive and clean, not confusing and cluttered. It needs to function properly, both now and in the future. And it needs to set you apart from your competitors, while inviting your patients to learn more by delving deeper into your site.

If you are interested in learning more, contact us today, toll-free at (877) 709-0999 for your FREE consultation with our web experts today!

Healthcare Marketing: Do Online Directories Actually Matter?

You’ve worked hard to build awareness of your healthcare business in your local community, but have you invested in building that awareness online?

While business directories, and online business directories in particular, aren’t the “sexiest” form of marketing, they are an integral part of a successful digital marketing program for any healthcare practice. This is because they continue to play a significant role in the research that patients conduct when searching for a new healthcare provider – 85% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses! The fact is, your healthcare practice needs an online presence to get found. And showing up in a patient’s online search results gives you a huge advantage over other medical professionals in the area.

General online business directories are a great place to start listing your medical practice. By linking your website to these types of business listings, you’ll see a significant boost in website traffic and, as you know, more views typically lead to more patients. Once search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing see a link from an online directory to your practice’s site, they’ll consider you “reputable” and will accordingly push your website up in the search rankings. Also, don’t forget to include a “local” element by having your practice listed under your suburb. Many people prefer to know that their healthcare provider is nearby, staffed by local people, and caring for the local community.

In addition to general directories, you will also want to list your practice on healthcare-related directories, such as WebMD.com, Healthgrades.com, and Vitals.com. These types of sites are directories, as well as online resources for information about symptoms, general wellbeing, and health news. They all have millions of regular site visitors every year so, similar to general online business directories, they’ll help increase both your website traffic and search engine ranking. As many of these sites also offer reviews, you’ll want to monitor them on a regular basis to ensure you’re managing (and keeping control of!) your online reputation.

The good news: online directories don’t require you to be particularly “tech savvy”, and they’re easy and cheap (often free!) to set up. However, they do pose one challenge. Writing content for an online healthcare directory is different that writing for your own website. You have a limited amount of space, which means the content you create needs to make an impact and it has to create a good impression – quickly.

In addition, it’s important that your business information is listed consistently for all online directories and that you have a keen eye for detail when submitting your content. Details as minor as the formatting of your phone number, how your office hours are entered, and whether you use, for example, DPM on one site and D.P.M. on another can lead to conflicts within your local business listings, and confusion for potential patients.

Online directories are an important, and often overlooked part of any healthcare marketing strategy. iHealthSpot offers a full range of online marketing services, providing the expertise and experience that you need to create online directory listings that will help you grow your practice. If you are interested in learning more, contact us today, toll-free at (877) 709-0999 for your FREE consultation with our experts today!

Online reviews can have the power to make or break your practice. According to MedScape, a survey of 50,000 patient reviews found that 25% of patients find their healthcare professionals online, including from online reviews. So, as more and more people use these reviews, it’s important to understand how your responses can impact your practice. In addition to helping amplify awareness of your practice with new patients, your responses can even minimize potential damage from a bad review.

The following are some Do’s and Don’ts when responding to your online patient reviews.

Positive Reviews

You should always respond to a positive review. It shows that you care about your patients and value their feedback.

- Do thank your patient for taking the time to write a review. Let them know how much you appreciate their feedback.

- Don’t ask your patient for anything. For example, no need to ask them to ‘spread the word’ about your practice, as that’s what they’ve just done with their review!

- Do keep your response professional. Less is more – keep it brief. Long responses can come across as overbearing. And don’t mention any details about them or the service you provided, as this could violate HIPAA rules.

- Don’t respond to minor criticism. Focus on the positive feedback in your response. Any reference to a criticism can make you look petty and unprofessional.

Here are a couple of quick tips for writing a good response to a positive review:

- Always start with a thank you…it’s the polite thing to do!

- Use your business name and key words to help the positive review appear in search results.

Negative Reviews

You should also respond to negative reviews. However, you need to be extremely careful as you don’t want to offend someone, or make the situation even worse.

- Do keep your response professional. Be pleasant (or at least neutral), keep it brief and remember, don’t reference any detail regarding the patient or the service. Also, don’t respond when you’re angry – the only person who will look bad is you.

- Don’t respond to trolls. If the review is obviously from someone who isn’t a patient or is making things up, contact the site admin and request assistance. If the comment violates the site’s rules, you can ask to have it removed.

- Do follow-up with a private message or phone call after responding to a particularly negative comment. This is a great opportunity to ‘turn lemons into lemonade’. If you put in the extra effort, your patient might decide to change or remove their comment, or even post a positive follow-up comment.

- Don’t ask your patient to remove the review. This will give the perception that you have something to hide. In addition, it could anger them further, causing them to post additional comments and raise awareness of the negative review.

Here are a couple of quick tips for writing a good response to a negative review:

- Even if the comments are unfounded, show sympathy that your patient had a bad experience.

- Don’t go into too much detail or ask any questions. Instead move the conversation offline by providing a phone number or email address.

- Don’t include your business name or key words as you don’t want the review to appear in search results.

Managing online patient reviews and responses can be a lot of work. If you don’t have the time, iHealthSpot offers comprehensive online reputation management via our Reputation MD Program.

We help monitor patient reviews online, promptly address any negative or false information, encourage patients to share their positive experiences, and promote those testimonials on social media. This enables you to take full advantage of online patient reviews without doing all the work. With iHealthSpot managing your reputation online, you can focus on creating positive patient experiences that will turn into dozens of positive testimonials.

If you are interested in our service, contact us today, toll-free at (877) 709-0999 and request a FREE consultation. We’ll evaluate your online ratings and provide a plan of action for monitoring your reviews and increasing your positive reach online.

5 Top Tips for Marketing Your Medical Practice

If you’re looking for better ways to promote your medical practice, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed: search engine marketing, social media, blogs, direct mail…the options can seem endless. To help make it easier, here are five of our top tips for marketing your medical practice:

Build a Website for Your Practice

If you want to attract new patients, you’ll need to market yourself online – and to do this, you need a professional-looking website. More than 70% of adults in the U.S. search for health information online. This means you need a responsive site that looks good on any type of device, from computer to tablet to mobile phone. It also means that your site content needs to be written in a way that helps build trust in your healthcare practice.

Engage Your Patients with Email Marketing

Email isn’t just a way to send routine information like appointment reminders. You can – and should – be using it to communicate with patients, even when they don’t need to visit your office regularly. Your email messages can be about anything, from a monthly Health Tip, to a quarterly eNewsletter, to an announcement about an upcoming event. And with a low-cost email marketing platform like Constant Contact or MailChimp, you can easily automate your email campaigns, so it won’t take up much of your time. The key to email marketing success is to ensure your content educates and engages with both current and future patients.

Don’t Forget About Direct Mail!

While email is an incredibly efficient way to communicate with your patients, it’s still easy for people to ignore an email. So, why not try sending out “Welcome to the Practice” letters to all new patients, or sending birthday cards to all your patients. Personal touches like this will help you keep your patients happy—and happy patients are much more likely to refer you to their friends and family.

Market Your Practice on Facebook

With more than 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is a powerful marketing tool you can use to promote your practice – for free. However, a lot of healthcare providers don’t give their Facebook business page much thought after the initial set-up. Many people don’t realize it’s a great way to engage with patients – for example, you can post a “Fitness Challenge” and ask people to post a picture to show they’ve completed it. Facebook helps you hear what your current (and future) patients have to say and helps them feel more connected to you. And it’s the ultimate way to get word-of-mouth referrals.

Build Your Online Reputation

Today, people often use online reviews as a first step to find a new doctor. Unfortunately, they typically focus on the bad reviews more than the good. So, tobuild (and manage) your online reputation, you need to embrace online ratings and reviews. Ask your patients to rate you: add a clickable link to your website, send an email request, or keep a tablet at the front desk where patients can review you before they leave your office. Ideally, you want new reviews every week to build up your total volume of positive reviews. In time, and with enough positive reviews, your ratings will rise to the top in any online search despite a few (inevitable) critical reviews.

Medical professionals work with iHealthSpot because they know they need a full-service digital marketing partner that can support the unique needs of their healthcare practice. From award winning medical website design and proprietary patient education content, to online marketing including social media and reputation management, we enable medical practices to market themselves using proven online and offline marketing strategies.

If you are interested in learning more, contact us today, toll-free at (877) 709-0999 for your FREE consultation with our marketing experts today!

Key Content for Your Orthopaedic Website

In today’s digital world, a professional, customized website is the foundation for a thriving orthopaedic practice.

Patients, as well as referring physicians, come to your site looking for answers to specific problems. From simple questions like the location of your office, to more complicated requests such as post-operative steps to take for recovery, your website needs to provide the answers, both easily and efficiently.

When building your website, the most important thing to keep in mind is that “Content is King.” What are you saying about your specialties? Will patients understand what you do and how you do it? How do you stand out from other surgeons? Good content on an orthopaedic website will answer these questions.

Specialties: You want your content to make it easy for patients to understand exactly what you do, so they don’t waste their time trying to figure out if you’ll be able to help them – and they don’t waste your office staff’s time by having to ask additional questions to better understand your areas of practice.

Your website should also have as much original content about your specialties as possible, as it will improve your search ranking – which means more people will see your website first. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important key to the success of any website.

Patient Education

This content will help new patients understand the pathologies you treat as well as the more in-depth aspects of the complicated procedures you use. Incorporating a Patient Education Library on your website helps reinforce what patients have heard from their doctor, which helps reassure them that you understand and are the best fit for their healthcare needs.

About You

This is your opportunity to connect with new patients, reassuring them that choosing you as their orthopaedic surgeon is the right thing to do. In addition to providing general information about your qualifications, why not give them the opportunity to get to know you better - for example, tell them why you chose orthopaedics, why you chose their community, etc.

Contact Information

Don’t make it difficult for patients to locate this information on your website. You want them to be able to find your office address, phone number and email address as easily as possible. In addition to having a “Contact Us” section on your site, we suggest adding it to the header and/or footer on every page.

Appointment Booking: While the traditional method of booking an appointment has been to ask patients to call for an appointment, a growing number of healthcare providers are also offering secure, online appointment booking systems. In addition to helping reduce the strain on your office staff, studies have shown that many people – especially younger patients – prefer the convenience of an online system. If you go this route, don’t forget to provide answers to common questions about your appointment process, e.g., insurance questions and parking considerations.

CONTACT FORM and one of our friendly sales representatives will be glad to assist you with your custom medical website design.

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Testimonials

“It was a dream working with the professional team at iHealthSpot. Procedurally they have everything down to a science. We were able to launch my client’s website ahead of schedule to rave reviews and site traffic results!“ -- Grace Carlson, APR Carlson Studio Marketing

“iHealthSpot was extremely creative and forward thinking when redesigning our website.... We receive great compliments from our patients and have increased traffic and use of our site due to the excellent visibility we have in search and how easy it is for patients to navigate our website.” -- Chris Bolduc, Bolduc Physical / Aquatic Therapy & Sports Medicine

“iHealthSpot has proven to be an excellent choice.... They listened to our needs and wants and worked closely with us to create a website that is engaging and user friendly. Their Responsive Design enables our patients to access the site, no matter where they are.... Patient traffic on our site has improved exponentially and continues to grow every day! “ -- Lani Clemens
Family Practice Center P.C.

"Do you LOVE the web site? Because I do. I think it is awesome and I can't thank you enough for working so closely with me and being so patient. Fine job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" -- Janet Bivens, MD, Kendrick Family Practice

“We have lots of compliments on the new website. Thanks for being a delight to work with." -- Leisle Chung, Vanguard Skin Specialists

"The website looks FANTASTIC. Thanks to the iHealthSpot team for a beautiful job!" -- David Fein, MD, North Dallas Wellness Center